would head across Barnegat Bay to Long Beach Island and the town of Harvey Cedars, to take in the festivities at one of the local drinking establishments.  What better way to end an already festive day?  But not only that, we also decided to make the trip even more interesting.  Rather than driving over by car, we instead decided to take the boat across the bay.  And why not? The night was just about perfect for night cruising and, after all, it was to be the last hurrah of the summer season, and we wanted to involve the boat in it as much as possible.  Besides, we figured that we'd be safer drunk out on the bay, than behind the wheel of a car.  So when the time came, we fired up the boat's engine, cast off the dock lines and waved our goodbyes to our marina neighbors, as we headed out into the bay, hopeful that we wouldn't end up somehow marooned on an uncharted desert isle, with no Ginger or Mary anne.  The journey toward our destination pretty much went off without incident (That in itself was surprising).  It was just getting fully dark by the time we headed out, but we had no problem finding our way across the bay in between the various shoals and sandbars (Art would not be so lucky exactly 2 years later), finding the public dock, and then tying up.  Reminding ourselves to remember where we parked, we then ambled off toward the bar a couple of blocks away.  As expected, the bar was hopping, with an end of summer party already well in progress, featuring a live cover band and cheap beer.  We then spent the next few hours hanging out, drinking, and listening to a local band do a fairly good rendition of some cool classic rock tunes.  At one point, Rich and I tried to get Art to get up and play guitar with the band, when they wanted to do a rendition of Chuck Berry's  "Johnnie B. Goode", which Art can really jam to.  He almost went for it, but I guess he wasn't quite drunk enough to perform in front of such a large audience.

The party started to wind down sometime after midnight and we decided to leave the bar.  I had been lamenting that I always wanted  my own "official" bar beer mug, so at Art's suggestion, I pretended to be more drunk than I really was, and I was "helped" out of the door by Art and Rich, while concealing my now empty mug under my shirt (Grand theft beer mug?).  Once out of sight of the bar, we abandoned our drunken facade, and laughed and stumbled back to where we tied up the boat.  In the back of my mind, I half expected it to be either sunk or missing, but surprisingly, it was just as we had left it.  After getting the engine running again (yet another surprise), and the lines untied, we began our journey back in the general direction of our marina.  As we headed out, Rich decided to crash in the forward V-bunk and catch a few Z's.  Art, meanwhile, cracked open another Bud down below in the cabin and started playing guitar, leaving me up on the flying bridge with the responsibility of navigating the bay (I was probably the most sober) back to our destination.  But I was not complaining.  No, quite the contrary, I sat back and began to enjoy my "task" of trying to pilot the boat across the bay without hitting anything.  For once, luck was with me as it was an absolutely breathtakingly beautiful clear night out on the bay, with a nice fresh cool bay breeze brushing by my face, with ample moonlight to see by, while the mellow sounds of muffled acoustic guitar music floated magically up from the cabin.  It was about as good as it ever got at night.  As we crossed the half way point across the bay, I was finding my inner Zen, and I had just finished thinking to myself that "It just doesn't get any better than this", when all of a sudden my euphoric mood was shattered, and reality reasserted itself as the engine was hastily shut down from the controls in the main cabin down below.  I was certainly not expecting this, to be sure, and it sure yanked me out of my peaceful, contented mood.  Initially, I had pretty much expected this to be another one of Art's frequent pranks, as I certainly didn't see any icebergs looming right ahead, or any other nearby obvious navigational hazards.  But as I jumped down from the flying bridge to see what was up, I realized that this time it was serious.  No, we weren't sinking or anything quite that catastrophic.   But it seemed that the engine had started to overheat.  A fact that I could not have determined from my perch on the flying bridge since there were no gauges up there.  Opening the forward engine cover and further investigation revealed that we had broken the fan belt which ran around the water pump and the alternator pulleys.  Oh-oh...... Do we even have a spare? I had fleeting thoughts of being forced to "MacGyver" a belt out of a hunk of rope or a bungee cord, like I had done some years prior in a similar boating mishap on Lake Wallenpaupack.  But I had doubts that this would even work (it didn't the last time). The alternative, being stranded in the middle of the bay at night, was even less desirable.  Thus began the frantic search for a spare belt, aided only by the dim light from an "L" shaped military issue flashlight to see by.  Meanwhile, the boat was adrift in the bay, but luckily, we were not in any immediate danger of running aground, or colliding with some other object or boat.  And speaking of luck, once again, good luck was seemingly on our side as our search managed to turn up a spare belt buried somewhere in the deep recesses of the bilge.  This "spare" turned out to be a thinner, somewhat ratty and frayed belt, which was also two sizes too big.  Thankfully we had tools with us (If there had been any other place to keep them at the marina, we probably wouldn't have), so I attempted to jury rig fitting the longer belt, and do it with nothing more than the dim flashlight to see by.  I had to take the alternator out past the end of the travel of the adjuster arm just to fit the belt, and it was still a bit loose.  I tightened everything up as best as I could, but without the adjuster arm, the alternator would not have as much support and the belt could not be tightened as effectively.  Having done all that I could do, I gave Art the green light and he started the engine. The belt was a bit floppy as it turned, but the engine temperature soon came down to normal.  I told Art about the precarious alternator rigging and advised him to take it easy so as not to throw the belt.  So what does Art do? He immediately runs the engine up to 4000 RPM, and begins to zigzag around the bay (remember it's after 2:00 in the morning by now).  I was holding my breath, as I waited for what I was sure would be the inevitable ejection of the sloppily rigged belt.  But somehow the belt stayed on, much to my surprise.  Up until this point, Rich had managed to remain asleep, even throughout the whole overheating and belt changing ordeal.  But now Art's sudden sharp turns caused him to nearly roll out of the V-berth.  So after an initial string of vulgarities, Rich gets up, finds a firecracker, lights it, and then tosses it up on the flying bridge. The next thing you know, Rich and I are standing at the stern end of the boat shooting bottle rockets at Art on the bridge, while Art was dropping firecrackers down on the deck at us. This is all happening while the boat is still running relatively fast (for this boat, "fast" was probably no more than 25 or so MPH), with Art still making occasional sharp turns, and none of us being completely sober.  This continued for about another half hour before we eventually ran out of fireworks, and without much in the way of further excuses, we reluctantly headed back to the marina.